This is the assessment of a counter-terrorism specialist in an interview with the Washington-based open intelligence entity, Langley Intelligence Group Network, or Lignet.

Andy Oppeheimer warns new dissident groups have begun to form in Northern Ireland and have taken the place of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which had been disbanded in 1997 following an agreement to end the violence there.

The new groups, he said, have no more than a hundred members each and are not well organized.

However, their low numbers make them difficult for law enforcement and intelligence officials to infiltrate, track and monitor them.

These new groups also prefer violence as their main tactic.

In a number of cases, some members of the PIRA who rejected the 1997 peace accord are working with the younger generation fighters in bomb making and attacking rail lines which, Oppenheimer said, is the “new blueprint for terrorism.”

They also don’t provide warnings of attacks, while providing false warnings and using under-vehicle booby traps and pipe bombs.

The new generation of fighters is receiving assistance from the outside, but not from the previous outside sources that helped fund the PIRA for years, Irish sympathizers, including those in the U.S. and those with access to weapons caches from Libya.

Instead, sources suggest weapons are being smuggled from Croatia into Northern Ireland and possible European criminal gangs.

Oppenheimer believes it would be easy to dismiss the various extremist groups operating in Northern Ireland as little more than an annoyance, but it would be a “serious mistake.”

The concern among law enforcement and intelligence organizations in Great Britain is the possible spread of violence in Northern Ireland to the mainland or London.

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